


Snipers

by ThatWildWolf



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alien/Human Relationships, Established Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, F/M, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Garrus is the Best Sniper Boyfriend, He Loves Her So Much I Want To Cry, Infiltrator (Mass Effect), Interspecies Romance, Is It Fluff If One Of Them Isn't Technically Conscious, Just sleep, Late Night Writing, Literal Sleeping Together, Mass Effect 3, No Sex, Relationship Study, Romance, Shepard (Mass Effect) is Bad at Feelings, Short One Shot, Snipers, That's A Love Language All On Its Own, Trust, Vulnerability, Watching Someone Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-19 09:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29748669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWildWolf/pseuds/ThatWildWolf
Summary: A sniper sees the battlefield differently than most soldiers. That's only to be expected. It's how things are for snipers. Eventually, you pick up some habits that stay with you even outside of combat... But, of course, that's only to be expected too.Short one shot.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	Snipers

Waking up immediately, without unnecessary movement, taking in her entire surroundings within just one second since opening her eyes.

A sniper's instinct.

In the very corner of her eye, she notices a blinking light. Inside the room? No, farther. Probably in the living room. With well-trained eye, she manages to estimate the distance as fifteen... twenty meters, maybe. Definitely in the living room.

As she sits up, she isn't exactly _trying_ not to make a sound. It's just second nature at this point. Not making unnecessary noise whenever possible. Moving so quietly others call it sneaking up on them. And, most crucial than anything else, learning when not to move at all.

The small habits only a seasoned sniper knows.

She shifts her sight slightly to the left, to the other half of the bed beside her, and even her trained and steady breath gets a bit uneven for a second.

Garrus is still fast asleep—a miracle all in it's own right. She could probably count all the times she'd actually seen him sleep like this on the fingers of one hand. She's never seen him so at peace, and in this one moment, she decides that it's all worth it. Maybe shore leave wasn't the worst idea in the world.

Turians don't _snore_ , nor make a lot of sound when they're sleeping, but he's quieter than most. And his sleep, she knows, is just as light as hers, just as easily disrupted by something as trivial as a blinking light in the other room.If she were to activate her omnitool now, it would definitely wake him up - and that's the last thing she wants to do.

It's long past the point at which she would be surprised at how much trust she puts into him on daily basis—the only person she could ever trust with watching her back. It used to baffle her, but now she understands it. She doesn't even tense her muscles at his touch, a habit which almost every other person still causes to kick in. A few months earlier, maybe, she would have still been surprised at the amount of trust she has for him. But not anymore.

That being said, nothing could shock her more than the sudden revelation that sweeps over her as she watches him sleep beside her.

 _He_ trusts _her_ , too.

He trusts her so much as to actually lay down and sleep, curled into something a human would probably describe as a fetal position, with his eyes closed but not shut tightly and his muscles completely relaxed. He trusts her so much that he's not ready to fight at any given moment (although she doesn't doubt for a second it wouldn't take him more than a few seconds to be so), that he isn't merely napping, but actually sleeping.

He trusts her enough to be at his most vulnerable lying next to her. His walls are lowered right now. All of them. He's not wearing his armor even though he often does to bed. They don't have weapons in their bedroom save for the small pistol under Shepard's pillow. If an enemy were to attack right now, Garrus could be killed within seconds. And yet his trust in her is so strong that it lets him fall asleep without inhibitions, with nothing and no one to keep guard except for her.

His life in her hands.

Shepard isn't one to cry, but this sudden realization almost brings a tear to her eye.

It's different than on the battlefield. There, trust in your squadmates is an axiom, something you can't survive a moment without. You hold each other's lives in your hands almost constantly. But out here, in the relative quiet of her apartment? It's different. Trust is different here than on the battlefield, and there's a reason why it's Garrus and not anyone else who's lying in that bed with her right now.

He has that trust from her.

And, as she is only very belatedly realizing now, so does she from him.

She reaches out towards him, but stops before she can make contact, her hand hovering a few centimeters away from his face. She doesn't want to wake him. Doesn't want to take away this moment of peace.

The usually rigid plates on his head are more relaxed now. His jaw isn't clenched and that gives his face an entirely new, completely peaceful look. Honestly, it actually does look like years had been taken away from him. Garrus, as Shepard sometimes has to remind herself, isn't even thirty years old, he's even younger than she is. He doesn't look it. There's way too much tension in him for a young man to carry, but right now, with that tension gone, she can see him clearly.

So she doesn't wake him. She doesn't touch him, content with just seeing the peaceful look on his face as he slumbers away from the horrors of this war she can't cut herself off from.

As always when he's not looking, she can't help but stare at the lower right side of his face. It's not pleasant to look at or think about, but it's something that she can't ignore no matter how hard she tries.

The thick scar tissue would feel different to the touch, more rugged and metallic than the smoother surface of his plates. Right now, basked in only the weak light of the neons from across the street, those scars look superficial. Much less serious than the injury behind them actually is. Almost... harmless.

She likes those scars. They're a physical affirmation of all the crap they've been through, a lifeline that holds Garrus tethered to her world. A reminder that despite everything, she had not lost him yet. She's pretty sure he likes them too, in his own way. They make him look dapper. Or that's what he says, at least. There's a lot of stuff he _doesn't_ say, too, even though she knows most of it in her heart.

Right now, in this almost complete darkness, weakly reflecting the pale neon lights, the scars are almost inconsequential. Squinting her eyes, she can pretend that just by moving her fingers on his cheek and mandible, she could brush the scars away as easily as he would brush away hair from her face.

Then she blinks and it's all gone. The scars are still there and there's nothing she can do about it. Garrus has been lucky to come out with just scars, and she tells herself that every damn day, but it doesn't change the way she feels.

She lets out a long, quiet breath. And that's how it is. She wonders, for a moment, what time it is - if it's the middle of the night or simply very early in the morning, and if there's any point in going back to sleep.

As stealthily as she can, she wriggles out of the covers and off the bed. Garrus shifts in his sleep, his arm blindly patting over where she had been lying next to him, but he doesn't wake up. Content with her skills, she slips out of the room as quietly as possible, heading towards the blinking light which had woken her up.

It's the intercom system, and Shepard's face falls almost immediately when she sees what the light means. There's an unread priority message on her terminal.

Without turning on the lights, she makes her way down the stairs and to the study. The pale blue light from the terminal almost blinds her after she's already gotten used to the darkness, but she puts in her login info nontheless, at this point going through the motions.

The email is exactly what she'd been expecting, and she lets out a sigh.

The very faint scraping sound behind her is something most people probably wouldn't have noticed, but the sniper inside of her recognizes it immediately.

She glances over her shoulder and sure enough, there's Garrus, all disheveled and sleepy as he looks at her with some concern. Even in this situation, she considers it a win when he can't get the sneak up on her. He breathes very quietly, and when he doesn't move, he's so still he might be a statue. Not even his chest moves with his breath.

After all, he's a sniper too.

"Hm?" A soft murmur. Not even something that could be classified as words, just a general question.

She tenses her shoulders.

"They need me back at the Normandy," she explains softly.

A moment of silence.

"Of course they do." Garrus shakes his head ever so slightly and eventually his eyes set somewhere far over her shoulder, in the darkened room behind her. "Well, this has been fun. What was it...?"

"Sixteen hours," Shepard answers with a half-laugh, extremely appreciative of how he tries to add some humor to the situation.

"Sixteen hours. That's more than some people get in a lifetime."

She doesn't return his smile.

"Next time will be better," Garrus promises and he puts so much emotion into the words that she's almost inclined to believe him. As if there's anything he can do to control these things.

"If there _is_ a next time," she says quietly. There's that scraping sound again as he moves closer to embrace her, and she pouts. "I told you to wear socks in the apartment. You're scratching my floor with your talons."

She feels weak vibrations rippling through her body when Garrus laughs. "Sorry. I forgot."

She smiles - at first weakly, but then it becomes more genuine as she comes to terms with the situation. It's not the first time she's had shore leave cancelled almost immediately. At least this time she actually had some downtime with her boyfriend. That's a win. And now that she's more or less rested, it's high time to get back to work. She's got so much to do.

"We'll be alright," she whispers eventually.

"Sure we will." Garrus's subvocals rumble with agreement. "We've got you."

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this two nights in a row in that wonderful time between 4AM and 5AM when everything you write makes perfect sense and progresses smoothly but I didn't beta read this so I'm sorry if there's little to no cause and effect or idk this is fluff, the plot isn't the important part


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